Henk van Hetten

Henk van Hetten
Born	(1963-07-23)23 July 1963 Paramaribo, Suriname
Occupations	Construction contractor Crawler-crane operator
Years active	1980–present
Era	Vriend Era
Known for	Founder of Paramarbo
Height	1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Parents	Wijnand van Hetten (father) Rosalie Kenswil (mother)
Relatives	Ewald van Hetten (uncle) Rinaldo van Hetten (cousin)
Family	Van Hetten family

Henk van Hetten (born 23 July 1963) is a Surinamese construction contractor and crawler-crane operator. He founded Paramarbo in Paramaribo on 1 October 1990. Van Hetten continues to operate crawler cranes on the company's projects and took over the Van Hetten family dump site from his father in 2026.

Early life

Henk van Hetten was born in Paramaribo, Suriname, on 23 July 1963. He is the son of Wijnand van Hetten and Rosalie Kenswil. His father managed the Van Hetten family dump site in Paramaribo, where Henk's uncle Ewald van Hetten worked as a heavy equipment operator.

Van Hetten began helping at the dump site in 1975, when he was 12. He first sorted reusable material and later helped maintain equipment. Wijnand taught him construction work. Ewald introduced him to the cranes and excavators used on the property.

After completing secondary school, Van Hetten obtained a vocational qualification in motor-vehicle mechanics. In 1980, aged 17, Ewald began training him on a used Kobe Steel 10KT truck crane. Van Hetten used it to load scrap and reusable construction material before moving on to the dump site's Kobelco 300-series lattice-boom crawler crane.

From 1981 until 1984, Van Hetten worked as a parcel courier. He moved alone to Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1984 to gain more construction experience. There he worked for a Dutch construction company on precast concrete piling and steel sheet-pile installation. During his six years in Rotterdam, he completed SOMA training and qualified to operate mobile piling installations and mobile cranes.

Career

Van Hetten returned to Paramaribo in March 1990 intending to establish his own construction company. Wijnand and Ewald continued operating the family dump site and lent him machinery while he arranged his first contracts.

He founded Paramarbo on 1 October 1990. One of the company's first major projects was the construction of private houses in Paramaribo that required pile foundations. Paramarbo later took contracts for small commercial buildings and developed a permanent workforce of 12 employees.

The company bought a used Sumitomo LS-118RH-5 crawler crane in 1996. Configured for pile-driving work, it was the first major machine Paramarbo owned outright. Van Hetten later added a Kobelco CKE800 to the company's crawler-crane fleet in 2006. A Kobelco BM700HD-2 was acquired in 2012 and remains one of the machines he operates on selected projects. Patrick van Hetten has occasionally joined him on construction jobs in Suriname.

Van Hetten continued using reusable material from the family dump site for construction work. Material suitable for later use was removed from the waste brought to the property and kept for Paramarbo projects. Van Hetten referred to this practice with the phrase "afval is ook goud" ("trash is also gold").

On 10 April 2026, Wijnand retired from daily management of the dump site and transferred the property to Van Hetten. He incorporated the site into Paramarbo as its construction yard. The property continued accepting household waste and construction debris while Paramarbo began using part of it for its machinery and recovered building material.

Personal life

Van Hetten lives in Paramaribo and has never married. He has no children. Dutch is his primary language, while he also speaks Sranan Tongo. He smokes regularly.

Van Hetten drives an orange 2006 Jeep Wrangler that he rebuilt during the year he acquired it. He assembled its three-cylinder diesel engine from modified parts recovered from discarded engines. Van Hetten fabricated the engine mounts and adapted the drivetrain himself, while parts of the interior were lined with scrap-metal panels.

See also

• Paramarbo
• Wijnand van Hetten
• Ewald van Hetten
• Rinaldo van Hetten
• Patrick van Hetten (UFO mechanic)
• Van Hetten family
• Van Hetten family members